As someone who spent a good chunk of my life in the commercial photography business, the magic sound of pop, snap and then the ppffffttt as the rollers press the chemical goo in a sheet of Polaroid 669 together is something rather special.

The smell, the chemical processes and watching images magically, slowly appear against the white stock was state of the art point and shoot in 1987 (ouch…) That was the process of shooting a Polaroid, the ubiquitous tool for composition and exposure – and for some, just art.

Bracketing and shooting roid was the lifeblood of the professional workflow – it was sorta like the dark secret really, with its bent corners & mysterious glyphs in black sharpie. It was truly an amazing format but was unfortunately & quickly trivialized almost overnight by our modern digital ways along with real typography, Der Kommisar and Culture Club… win some.. lose some…

Polaroid film came in a variety of formats including: 20×24, 8×10, 4×5, medium format and of course sx-70 – the penultimate point and shoot. It just spat the art right out at you….

I loved it and we had polaroids filled with amazing happenstance beauty, blackmail worthy pics of crew and the odd professional mishaps plastered everywhere in the studio. It was the semi-permanent record of what really happened. The film was like the fantasy of how you wanted life to be (or like the client wanted life to be), but the polaroids showed what was real… That workflow and instant Polaroid film in general are all but gone now but the vestiges of yesterday still lurk in studio files everywhere including my garage.

Our favorite shooter – Jamie Kingham (the guy who shot our Addy winning lifestyle campaigns) has just thrown up his semi-permanent record from shooting around the world.

Check out some of his pics below and the link here.

And, get this, there is a new company trying to bring it all back…. The company is called The Impossible project – http://www.the-impossible-project.com/.

Manufacturing instant film in an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands. Worth checking out – this is the photography equivalent of the slow food movement. Love it.

We had the pleasure of entertaining the Acme Made International product managers and marketing teams last week. Lots of good stuff – yes, Powerpoint (or in our case Keynote) can really keep the team on the edge of their seats… [yawn]

As always the evening presentations were by far the more interesting with lots of laughs, lots of good local beverages and lots of new friends made.

One highlight was one Tim Sadler – self-proclaimed self proclaimer from our UK office. He shared some not-so-cliche images of SF and the surrounding area in his blog.

We are now fans!

San Francisco in the Spring

Some of our faves:

Yep - still break dancing in SF

Halo Effect

Keyes

Check out the full slideshow here.

12 great apps that every designer can use

So, after using my iPhone relatively successfully for the past couple years, it made sense to pull together a few suggestions for some great apps for creative professionals.

1. myPantone. is an incredibly useful tool. Snap a picture and select a color and it will give you the closest PMS match as well as other complementary colors for a palette. I love this app and actually use it a lot.

2. OmniFocus. A great way to organize and sort your To Do list. I like the way it keeps things sorted and sync’s with my Mac.

3. Gorilacam. The guys who make the Joby GorillaPod came out with this great little app to turbo-charge the built-in camera of the iPhone. It has a level built into the display, it provides zoom, anti-shake and a host of other great little features for taking those quick pix on the fly.

4. SketchBook Mobile from AutoDesk. A true sketching tool for the iPhone that lets you sketch with your fingers with some semblance of accuracy. OK, am I going to drop Illustrator for this? Uh, no. But it has a very nice interface and does a beautiful job in a “pinch”.

5. PS Mobile. What designer collection of apps would be complete without Photoshop Mobile? It’s a pretty useful little app that offers some nice features for color correction and cropping on your photos.

6. A Conversion tool. Sure, there are tons of them and I probably have 3 or 4 – they all work, so then it’s down to interface and I really like Convertbot based on a really nice interface.

7. Color Expert. Another nice tool for identifying colors, either using a color wheel or a photo. One of the first color matching tools and still a good one.

8. Air Sharing. A great little app that turns your iPhone into a wireless USB stick of sorts. It simply allows you to share files wirelessly from your iPhone to another computer. Besides, who always has a USB stick on them? But I do have my iPhone with me constantly.

9. AppBox Pro. You buy App Box and it covers the majority of baseline utilities from a flashlight to unit and currency conversion to a whole lot more. It’s basically your grab bag of apps but I do find it incredibly useful.

10. WhatTheFont. Okay, not totally wild about this one, but it’s the only app out there for fonts that has some value – take a pic and have it help identify what font it is. I’d wait for a couple iterations of accuracy, but it is a useful concept.

11. Twitter. Sure, it’s not a design tool, but following some of the world’s top designers, product releases, and sites like NotCot, makes Twitter an amazing tool for designers. You’re getting data faster than any other source available. Quickest way to stay up to date on trends and news.

12. WGSN News. WGSN is a great service for following trends and “creative intelligence”. This app collects all of the news from the fashion and retail industry. It’s amazingly useful and very interesting what you learn on a day-to-day basis.

So there ya go. From one designer to another, those are some things that I find useful in my daily job. Now your turn, share what you’ve got (and why).

Lucky

The Apple iPad

Like pretty much everyone we know, Acme Made is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new Apple iPad. With our focus on delivering products that personalize and protect your modern mobile lifestyle – in all its forms – you can be sure we have our eye on this new and innovative device.

Using some amazing new materials and with a few innovations thrown in, we are excited to announce that we are working to deliver some great new products specifically for the Apple iPad.

Please keep an eye on our website for upcoming products.

But first, we want to hear what you are looking for in this sexy new device as well as the accessories that will help you use it. Send us your thoughts, comments and ideas on what you might want to see in future iPad accessories. If you haven’t seen what the iPad can do, check it out at Apple’s website.

Our new favorite photo blog is the joint adventure of 3 San Francisco photographers, called simply “Caliber”. Julie Michelle, Stuart Dixon and Troy Holden have created a beautiful record of the Bay Area, both past and present.

Some of our faves:

71 Limited by Troy Holden

Basking by Stuart Dixon

Seems Like Old Times by Julie Michelle

You can see the full blog here: http://calibersf.com/

Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s have published a “21st-century newspaper prototype” in the form of a Sunday-style broadsheet. At 300+ pages, the “San Francisco Panorama” has original content from over 150 writers, artists and photographers.

San Francisco Panorama from McSweeney's

Extra cool….Extra smart and totally rad thinking as we witness print going through such horrifying upheavals. The paper was sold on the street in SF yesterday, and is also being sold online and in area bookstores.

Read more here.

Joby Pop-Up Store

Check out our latest new retailer – the Joby Inspired gallery and pop-up store launched earlier this month in the trendy Hayes district of San Francisco.

Lasting just 10 days, the Joby Inspired event was a collaboration between Joby, the makers of the Gorillapod, and local design firms, including:

• Derek Chen
• Envelope AD
• Design Glut
• Richard Hansen
• Materious
• Peter Stathis
• Philip Wood

These firms created installations based upon and using Joby products.

The retail store featured products from Acme Made as well as Lensbabies, Vespa San Francisco, and Lomography.

Smart Laptop Sleeve

Metro Tote

Take a look at a guy who intrigues us: Bhautik Joshi.  Bhautik is a research engineer at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), DIY inventor, digital enthusiast, blogger and self-described rambler.  He lives in San Francisco and takes his curiosity to every corner of the city and beyond.

On his mind: Completed a PhD with the CSIRO BioMedia Lab titled Model Generation and Interaction in Surgical Simulation, where he investigated algorithms for creating real-time biomechanical simulations from medical imaging scans.

 
On his head: a down-to-earth bucket hat:

Latest invention:  The plungercam.
Bhautik has found a way to create a DIY tilt-and-shift lens, and he provides instructions on his blog:
http://cow.mooh.org/2009/07/plungercam-2-cheaper-and-more.html

His view of Fisherman’s Wharf, plungercammed:
A kitschy, touristy, and seemingly very tiny neighborhood gets some very special effects thanks to Bhautik’s cool invention:

Find out more about Bhautik Joshi:
- Visit his blog
- Peruse his Flickr page
- View his videos